http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/25/technology/nintendo_wii/index.htm?hpt=T2 gonna debut the new system in a month or so, start selling it in 2012
I don't think this will end well for Nintendo. The Wii sold so much because it was bought by people who don't usually play games, those people don't buy a new console every couple of years. If the launch titles are as poor as they were for the 3DS I can't see it selling well at all.
Any chance they'll ever get back into the more mainstream console market or did the Game Cube pretty much ruin all chance of that?
Yes but the Wii had average sales for the first couple of years then really picked up around 2008-9 then really picked up so a large number of units are 2-4 years old.
The next Nintendo system will sell just fine. The new system gonna land in a safe pocket before the release of the next xbox/playstation so that uber video game system buyers will grab it, the system will be strong enough so that multiplat AAA title on the 360 & PS3 will get a proper port and Nintendo is like Disney rerelease or remake their classics to snag sales from old gamers nostalgic for for when they were young and young gamers just getting in to the hobby.
I was going to comment on how they're going to miss the holiday shopping season, but then I remembered the earthquake-stricken part of Japan is home to a lot of electronics parts manufacturing plants (iPhone 5 is already delayed 3 months because it uses Sony parts made in Japan).
From the article: "The new system could help the flagging Japanese company. It announced that net sales dropped 29% during the fiscal year ended March 31, with net income plunging 66%. That was worse than the year before, when net sales fell 22% and net income dropped 18%" I give Nintendo a lot of crap for being the family-friendly, everything g-rated, system. (Yeah, i'm sure they have some fairly violent stuff, but most of their stuff is as described.) Sidetrack: Nintendo 64's Perfect Dark and GoldenEye games were great. Yet, there'll ALWAYS be kids, and Nintendo stuff has always been a safe option for families with young kids. Nintendo took a long time to have a disc-based system. When GameCube was finally released, other systems were playing DVDs and CDs. GameCube couldn't. In this regard, they've always been one step behind. Apparently, you can play DVDs on the Wii with a hack. Blu-Ray, i'm not sure about, but I wouldn't bet on it. IMO, the games could still appeal to that family-friendly market if they weren't so dreamy and unrealistic. I have the Wii Sports game, and the players seem to randomly lose their legs... it's just not life-like. If Wii2 was the same as the original Wii, but could play blu-ray right out of the box, and the graphics were a little more believable (read above paragraph), things could be great.
http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/bonusround/504?ch=1 Don't normally watch this but I love Jeff Gerstmann so I checked it out. They make some really good points about the new console.